Are Rights-Based Services Important? An Adolescent PrEP Demonstration Project in Brazil

Laura Ferguson, Alexandre Grangeiro, Ana Alexandra Natividad, Paula Massa, Ayra Rodrigues, Dulce Ferraz, and Eliana Miura Zucchi Abstract In this study, we systematically examined the importance of human rights standards and principles for rights-based pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) provision for marginalized adolescents. Nested within a demonstration study of PrEP provision to adolescent men who have sex with men, travestis, and transgender women, we carried out interviews in São Paulo, Brazil with…

Pharmaceutical Patents and Economic Inequality

Vol 25/2, 2023, pp. 199-204  PDF PERSPECTIVE Thomas Pogge A human right is realized when all persons have secure access to its object, to what this right is a right to. States and particularly governments have a responsibility to make this happen—principally by not taking measures that prevent such secure access. Governments currently award and enforce 20-year product patents on pharmaceuticals in accordance with the TRIPS Agreement they included in…

Reproduction as Work: Addressing a Gap in Current Economic Rights Discourses

Vol 25/2, 2023, pp. 29-42  PDF Lauren Danielowski Abstract In 2022, the global commercial surrogacy industry was valued at approximately US$14 billion. This paper explores the issue of surrogacy to reveal how international human rights standards and labor laws treat reproduction as work, building on previous scholarship analyzing similar framing at the grassroots level in Mexico. I argue that the failure to recognize surrogacy as labor is rooted in three…

Why Has a Progressive Court Failed to Protect the Prison Population against COVID-19? Mass Incarceration and Brazil’s Supreme Court

Vol 25/2, 2023, pp. 67-82  PDF Daniel Wei Liang Wang, Luisa Moraes Abreu Ferreira, Paulo Sergio Coelho Filho, Matheus de Barros, Julia Abrahao Homsi, Mariana Morais Zambom, and Ezequiel Fajreldines dos Santos Abstract Despite acknowledging the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic for the prison population, Brazil’s Supreme Court declined to issue structural injunctions during the health crisis ordering lower courts to consider these risks when making incarceration-related decisions. These injunctions…

Occupation is a Public Health Crisis Too

Anurima Kumar and Meera Rothman In the face of the glaring humanitarian crisis in Palestine, the silence of American public health institutions has been deafening. After a month of relentlessly bombing Al-Shifa hospital (notably using American missiles that slice through flesh), Israeli troops entered and raided the hospital wards, killing and displacing people in need of immediate care.[1] The American Medical Association (AMA), widely recognized as the foremost medical lobbying…

Human Rights and Medical Conferences: Against Conventional Wisdom

Jacob M. Appel The recent decision by the International Association of Bioethics (IAB) to hold its 17th annual World Congress of Bioethics (WCB) in Doha, Qatar, has been met with considerable backlash over the proposed host country’s record of human rights abuses. Five leading Dutch bioethicists led by Rieke van der Graaf raised concerns regarding Qatar’s long history of abusing migrant laborers, suppressing minority tribes, lack of freedom of expression,…

Wëlamàlsëwakàn (Good Health): Reimagining the Right to Health through Lenape Epistemologies

Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 207-212  PDF PERSPECTIVE A. Kayum Ahmed, Joe Baker, and Hadrien Coumans Introduction Human rights have historically advanced an anthropocentric world view that reinforces the right to health of human beings, disconnected from the health of nonhuman nature and what the Lenape people refer to as Kahèsëna Hàki (Mother Earth).[1] For the Lenape and other American Indian nations, as well as many Indigenous communities globally, the border…

Five Lessons for Advancing Maternal Health Rights in an Age of Neoliberal Globalization and Conservative Backlash

Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 185-194   PDF Alicia Ely Yamin Abstract After considerable progress in recent decades, maternal mortality and morbidity (MMM) either stagnated or worsened in most regions of the globe between 2016 and 2020. The world should be outraged given that we have known the key interventions necessary for preventing MMM for over three-quarters of a century. Since the 1990s, human rights advocacy on MMM has gained crucial ground,…

Social Accountability and Legal Empowerment Initiatives: Improving the Health of Underserved Roma Communities in Eastern Europe

Volume 25/1, 2023, pp. 67-80 |  PDF Marek Szilvasi and Maja Saitovic-Jovanovic Abstract Improving the protection of the right to health of ethnic Roma people is one of the most pressing public health challenges in contemporary Europe, as their life expectancy and health status remain significantly lower than their non-Roma counterparts.[1] This paper analyzes Roma-led accountability initiatives that embrace social accountability and legal empowerment approaches to advocate for equitable fulfillment…

From Apathy to Structural Competency and the Right to Health: An Institutional Ethnography of a Maternal and Child Wellness Center

Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 23-38  PDF Margaret Mary Downey and Ariana Thompson-Lastad Abstract Given the persistence of health inequities in the United States, scholars and health professionals alike have turned to the social determinants of health (SDH) framework to understand the overlapping factors that produce and shape these inequities. However, there is scant empirical literature on how frontline health and social service workers perceive and apply the SDH framework, or…